The fundamental blog layout can be pretty crap for converting visitors unless you have exceptional content that can’t be found anywhere else.

The ‘above the fold’ (top of the page before scrolling) area on most blogs is usually taken up by one story and a bunch of basic links in a sidebar. Layouts like Smh homepage are optimized to get a user to click on an article with a selection of images associated with articles.

Hot images can really help increase ctr. The band of images near the bottom of the fold on the shm is a proven converter.